There are many applications requiring imaging of a certain region of interest with different resolutions or fields of view. The ability to maintain high optical resolution (i.e., small instantaneous field of view) while performing wide angle optical coverage is a driving parameter of electro-optical detection systems, especially when effects and objects which are to be detected are very small spatially, or weak temporally. The ability to maintain concurrently low resolution wide area coverage and high resolution selective object investigation is required, for example, when an observer is required to monitor continuously a wide field of view coverage area when performing, for example, target detection, while at the same time (or at minimum loss of such wide field of view coverage time) performing high resolution candidate target investigation, for example visual classification (or recognition) of such suspect detections, using a narrow field of view with higher resolution.
In medical applications, and more specifically in the human visual system, the above problem is resolved by utilizing higher resolution, narrow field of view within a sensing region located in the central part of the field of view of the optics used for object recognition, and lower resolution, wide field of view peripheral sensing for spatial and temporal object detection, such as for example scene change and motion detection, and visual navigation analysis.
Various optical systems aimed at solving the above problems are described for example in the following patent publications: U.S. Pat. No. 5,172,235; U.S. Pat. No. 5,418,364; U.S. Pat. No. 6,734,911; U.S. Pat. No. 6,495,827; US 2003/01933562; US 2006/0175549.